Wilmington's third Gere

Thursday

May 31, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 31, 2007 at 9:23 AM

One reader e-mailed this week to chide us for neglecting the talented Diane Lane, who's co-starring in the big-screen romance Nights in Rodanthe, which has been filming in this area.Guilty as charged, and I'll try to redeem us by looking at Lane's remarkable career in a future column.On the other hand, multiple readers - all female, it turns out - have been writing and phoning to demand more coverage of Lane's leading man, Richard Gere: for example, where is he staying and where can they find him. One acquaintance has been hatching a scheme involving a "borrowed" pizza-delivery uniform and, I think, a magnum of champagne.Well, sorry, folks: The people at DiNovi Pictures and Village Roadshow, which are producing Nights, are being very protective of Gere's privacy.If, however, you happen to read The Film Junkie's Guide to North Carolina, you'll discover that the actor apparently has a sweet tooth for the products of Apple Annie's Bake Shop. During previous visits, he's been spotted in the store. (At last report, his autographed photo still hangs in Apple Annie's Kerr Avenue location.)Can you name Gere's two made-in-Wilmington features? You can win your bar bet if you know No Mercy (1986) and The Jackal (1997). Neither was ever an Oscar contender, but it's always amusing to see your hometown on screen, and both are available on DVD.Directed by Richard Pearce, who's switched over to television in recent years (Medium, CSI: Miami, etc.), No Mercy starred Gere as a maverick Chicago cop who headed to New Orleans on the trail of a hit man. Along the way, he winds up on the run, handcuffed to a gangster's moll (Kim Basinger). Naturally, they fall in love.Reviews were fair: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "above-average film noir," although he admitted it was more than a little formulaic. At least some of the New Orleans and Baton Rouge scenes were shot on the actual sites, although the scenes where Gere and Basinger had to wade waist-deep through the bayous were actually filmed out at Greenfield Lake.The Jackal, directed by Michael Caton-Jones (Rob Roy, Doc Hollywood), was supposedly based on the classic film thriller Day of the Jackal (1973). Instead of trying to assassinate Charles DeGaulle, however, the super-competent, chameleon-like hit man (Bruce Willis) is targeting the head of the FBI for the Russian mafia.Gere played a retired IRA sniper, sought out by an FBI agent (Sidney Poitier) since he's one of the few people who's ever seen the Jackal and lived to tell about it. Most of the local shooting was done on the lot at the EUE/Screen Gems Studios on 23rd Street, although Willis was filmed taking a ride aboard the Southport-Fort Fisher ferry.Animated Oscar nomineesJust a reminder: The Cucalorus Film Foundation will be screening this year's Oscar-nominated animated shorts at 7:30 p.m. today and Friday at Jengo's Playhouse, 815 Princess St. As with the live shorts earlier this month, admission is free, but donations will be accepted.Magnolia Pictures, which put together the program, added on several of the runners-up to make a program about 80 minutes long.Some of these, it should be emphasized, aren't exactly kiddie cartoons: A Gentleman's Duel, for example, has two Victorian twits fighting over the honor of a less-than-honorable lady whose plunging cleavage seems to have bounced out of Playboy. Not all of the animated rats are cute. Let's call this one PG-13.Still, the program is well worth catching. (A bit of disclosure: My wife gets paid to raise money for Cucalorus.)The Oscar winner, The Danish Poet, catches the whimsical side of the Scandinavian nature, one that's often masked by all the Bergman-esque long-winter-night depression. Despite the title, incidentally, the little film is a joint Norwegian-Canadian production. The fluidity of those Nordic borders is underlined in the course of the action by narrator Liv Ullmann (who, the film points out, spent her career in the Swedish film industry but is actually Norwegian).My heart, however, went out to the Disney entry, The Little Matchgirl. Directed by Rogers Allers (The Lion King, Open Season), this brief charmer harks back to Disney's glory days of rich, full, hand-drawn non-digital animation (although the production did use some CGI effects). The story - told almost entirely in pantomime - transfers the Hans Christian Andersen story from Denmark to the Russia of the tsars, with the Russian composer Borodin's String Concerto No. 2 played in the background. The action, however, stays true to the text, with remarkably little sentimentalizing. The Matchgirl has no cute Disney animals as friends. As with Pan's Labyrinth, whether the ending is happy or sad depends on your personal faith in the afterlife. Apparently, The Little Matchgirl was supposed to be part of Fantasia 2006, a project the studio canceled. Thank goodness this little gem was rescued from the rubble.Disney's competitor, Blue Sky, is represented by No Time for Nuts, starring the hapless prehistoric squirrel Scrat from the Ice Age movies. (This little short is one of the extra goodies on the DVD edition of Ice Age: The Meltdown.) This time, Scrat stumbles upon a time machine from the future, which forces him to chase his beloved acorn across myriad tense moments in the planet's history.Maestro, a Hungarian entry, shows an entirely different animation style that might be mistaken for stop-motion. An operatic virtuoso is prepared for his big performance by a robotic assistant; beyond that, I can't spoil the surprise.One Rat Short and The Wraith of Cobble Hill tell darker tales in urban landscapes. For comic relief, Bill Plympton's Guide Dog - which also screened at Cucalorus - has an enthusiastic pooch volunteering to help the blind, with unfortunate results.Ben Steelman: 343-2208ben.steelman@starnewsonline.com